The Foreign Invention of British Art [Hardcover]

A timely history of immigration, integration, and national identity that reveals the true heritage behind some of the nation's defining artworks. A timely celebration of multiculturalism . . . British art historian and lecturer Primo . . . argu[es] persuasively that the 'new artistic sensibility' that eventually became known as the British school of art could not have developed without the influx of artists from abroad . . . Born in Britain as a person of color with Caribbean heritage, Primo informs his study with a deep sensitivity to the xenophobia and discrimination that incomers still experience in British society. A sweeping story of British art that is simultaneously familiar and refreshingly strange. Above all, it is a recentering of the story of British art, in which artists from the Continentand their impacts on English-born paintersare seen not as anomalies but logical, essential contributors to a body of work made in Britain across three centuries. The reader is in good hands with Primo, who seamlessly blends lively artists biographies with perceptive formal analysis, foregrounding dozens of jaw-dropping paintings from 1500 to 1800& Primo excels in distilling big subjects into manageable units that feel rich and satisfying. His love for the material is infectious, and his voice radiates a thoughtful, unassuming affability. A master class in big, narrative-driven art history.